These are a selection of concepts for new legal services & designs that I have had or observed elsewhere — and then noted them down in headline form.
Here is one map I made of (some of) the camps of ideas for Access to Justice in particular. See more details at the official Access to Justice Innovations page of the Legal Design Lab.
And here is a small collection of some of these ideas & more — with details and visuals added in.
Please browse through them — and if you have other concepts to add, write in with them using the form provided.
Could we take the workshops that self-help centers already run in person, and make online versions of them to get wider distribution? To people who can't travel to self-help centers or need it during weekends or evenings? If we package up the guides into more usable formats, we can help ...
What if we made templated, user-tested Cover Sheets to all legal tasks (whether it's filling out forms or going through a procedure) so that people have great introductions and orientations to the task before being asked to do it.
What would it look like if there was one major site online, that anyone searching out help for a life problem could use?
They would enter their problem, legal issues would be identified, and then the person would be directed to the legal org who can help them.
They will get a ...
Inspired by the civic technology project CityVoice, that lets any person call up to leave a voice message about a problem they're experiencing with their city government or infrastructure -- can we provide a similar feedback loop in court and legal services?
What if people in the legal system had ways to give their feedback, so that the courts, lawyers, and other professionals could improve their services based on user experience metrics?
The metrics could be:
- comprehensibility
- accessibility
- ease of use
- sense of fairness
- positivity/negativity of experience
This is a simple feedback card -- ...
At courts, at community centers, at libraries, at cafes -- can we have interactive boards full of resources and services that people could access?
Could we have a traveling courthouse, that offers limited legal services to you in more convenient, and people-friendly places? Like in libraries, in community centers, churches, even festivals?
Some of the services it could help you do:
See if you have warrants out against you & deal with them
Deal with your traffic ...
Could we build a single portal to all kinds of legal support, help, counsel? If it's a simple, memorable number that's the same across the country -- that would be terrific from a branding approach.
The LSC-TIG Summit last year listed centralized state-by-state legal portals as one of their central agenda ...
What would an all-in-one collaboration platform look like, for clients & lawyers to work together? If there could be one place that coordinates a person's journey from having a legal problem, to seeking help, to actually carrying through resolution of the problem -- it could help reduce so many of ...
Could we create a Schedule & Alert system to let litigants and court people know what the busy-ness & traffic level are?
Especially for litigants who have a choice about when they come into court (say to contest a traffic ticket) - couldn’t we help them decide when to come in, ...
Can we make navigators that are game-like, or make games that allow a person to do a prep-run of what an actual legal procedure will be like?
An idea for gathering intake information & triage-ing users to the right legal resource by giving them video scenarios/stories to watch and then figure out which best corresponds to their situation.
Another kind of navigator, that shows you how to get from point A to point B, from problem to resolution.
An idea to help lay people go through legal processes by giving them interactive and customized guides to going through them step by step.
Could we use the same methods of those television lawyers who bombard daytime-tv-watchers with 'Are you injured? Can you sue? Call now to find your rights!' -- to increase lay people's awareness of their rights, of civil remedies, of free or low-cost legal services?
Could we put law on the street? Have public space installations that give basic outreach, checklists, resources, if not even full-blown clinics for people to encounter in their daily life?
Could we build stronger legal public relations, outreach, and onramping to the world of legal services?
One stream of ideas for improving access to justice: can we brand legal services & lawyers, to make them more known, more trustworthy, more purchase-able & engaging for non-lawyers?
An idea for having a document-software plugin (think, for Microsoft Word) that would track its lawyer & law students' mark-ups of legal documents, learn where the arguments were and what good arguments are, and then use those patterns to make smart recommendations to the lawyer as she is crafting arguments ...
A tool that would read contracts & legal documents so that you don't have to. It would boil it down into key things that you should know -- the essential conditions, trade-offs, etc.
Could we have a tech-based companion for people going through a court process? It could have timing advice, location directions, and other support to make sure the person is prepared for their day in court.
An idea to allow a person with a legal decision to make to play around with possible variables & the outcomes that would result. It would be a way to see multiple different scenarios, and weigh options before making a decision.
An idea for schematically diagramming a legal brief -- to make it more instantly clear what its content is.
What would a better legal brief look like? What would it be to submit writings for the judge’s consideration in ways that are more formally structured — so that these communications could:
1) ...
An idea for better education around law -- summing up a concept in a card, with a visual to illustrate it, and some key writeups of the concept. It would make the concept stickier and clearer.
Could we build an interactive & responsive map, that would show a person the steps and path of a legal process -- and then document where they are on it?
Could we create a collaboration platform & network that would provide a holistic service for a person with a legal problem -- so they have all the different kinds of support they need?